Roderick Coover

Andrew W. Mellon Regional Fellow in the Humanities

2005—2006 Forum on Word and Image

Roderick Coover

Temple Assistant Professor, Film and Media Arts

Text, Webs, and the Time-Image

Prof. Coover is working on an essay that explores the use of text and language in time-based work (film, video, flash animation, Quicktime) and virtual reality environments (360-degree panoramas, Quicktime VR, Caves). He investigates how formalist works in language and film/media arts (such as the films of Hollis Frampton), and studies in language and perception (including the works of Nelson Goodman), can aid in the conceptualization of language and art in digital environments.

This essay coincides with a visual project that Prof. Coover is recording in collaboration with author Debra Olin Unferth, in Mexico. It consists of a series of poems which overlap in 360-degree VR environments that combine fragmented narrative moments and movements. These works take place in urban environments, blurring borders between narrative and nonfiction representation and between text, sound, and imagery.